It's Raining Again

It rained yesterday while we were in the water. It continued to rain off and on during the day and it rained last night. According to www.weather.com we have had more than .2" in the last 24 hours so I have to assume the water is polluted. If it doesn't rain anymore that means I will be back in the water on Thursday, 11/11. Having not surfed today, I have surfed 107/137 days since June 25. I have been noticing further improvements to my surfing after what was a plateau for a couple months. I have gotten a lot better at working up and down the face of the wave. Previously, my efforts to this end were limited by keeping the board parallel to shore. Recently I have gotten much better at bottom turns, allowing me to drive back up the face of the wave, and top turns, where I actually fall back around to drop back into the wave. I have been getting a lot of rights lately with the storm centers moving from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere, so I can actually work the top turns better going right than left. I still get better control going left and can maintain speed better. Yesterday, I took off on a left and thought it was going to close on me, but I worked the face and built up enough speed to get back in front of the wave, back in the curl. I am understanding why it is difficult to learn to surf. In order to surf well, you have to react to the wave. In order to react to the wave, you need to have been on enough waves, in a similar situation, to be able to predict what is going to happen. This means that it is a slow, incremental learning process. The steps to learning to surf are:

1. Get a feel for standing up. Do this in the whitewater.

2. Learn to time a wave as it comes in. This can be done on a surfboard or bodyboard, or bodysurfing.

3. Put 1 and 2 together and just go straight.

4. Add a bottom turn.

5. Learn to control your speed with turns and the face of the wave.

6. Top turns.

7. Aerials (anyone can get air once you can do a good bottom turn. Being able to land it is the trick).

8. Tow in Surfing.